The present invention relates to a method of installing and displaying decorative lights, such as a continuous strand of Christmas lights, around a house, while standing on the ground, and without the necessity of having to use a ladder. More specifically, the present invention relates to decorative simulated icicles for supporting ornamental lights that may be used during the holiday season.
Decorative lighting fixtures are becoming more sophisticated with every new holiday season. Gone are the days when simple blinking lights strung around trees would suffice to welcome Christmas and the New Year. Today there is a demand for more sophisticated lighting scenarios to adorn homes and buildings. With the demand for new lighting arrangements comes the need for newer and improved flexible frames to support these lighting arrangements  and attachment devices to affix such frames to buildings and other structures.
In addition to the increasing demand for more versatile lighting frames, there is a concurrent demand for improved ways and devices for attaching such frames to the building structure. Previously, numerous hooks and hangers for supporting cords and wires, particularly those with ornamental Christmas lights were available to adorn homes. Many of these hooks and hangers were permanently or semi-permanently affixed to the building structure. The installation of these devices was particularly time consuming and laborious and removal was equally complicated. In addition, these devices could not be rearranged at a later date to accommodate changes in the structure of the building or simply to rearrange for a different display of the lights.
Removable hooks such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,181, 827, wherein a clip designed to hold a cord with ornamental lights has an extended portion that fits between shingles and a clip portion that fits around a gutter are also commercially available. Such hooks have many advantages in that they are relatively easy to use and remove but may still be difficult to install onto gutters and  other building fixtures or hard to reach structures. Other hooks that hold decorative lights are designed solely to fit between shingles such as those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 356,246 and 356, 492, while some such as that described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,141,192 and 6,347,780 are specially designed to mount onto a gutter.
There are a large number of patents related to this field, but there is only two, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,141,192 and 6,347,780, that specifically address a solution for installing decorative light hangers to an elevated part of a house, specifically a gutter lip, while standing on the ground and without the use of a ladder. The 6,347,780 patent requires a complex system including a spring-loaded hanger clip having jaws that grip the gutter and a string connected to a hand actuated slider distal from the hanger clip jaws to actuate the same. Furthermore, the 6,347,780 patent requires two-handed operation. The 5,141,192 patent requires the use of an elongated staff with a horizontal rod mounted at one end. In practice, however, this solution requires a difficult and delicate operation to get the hook to seat properly on the wide variety of gutter lips found on houses, particularly when the desired mounting location is at a fairly high elevation (11  feet or more on many houses). Moreover, use of the elongated staff is cumbersome, as there needs to be amble room and the staff long enough to pivot the staff at an end opposite the hook to properly position the hook with respect to the gutter lip extending horizontally from a leading edge defining the gutter toward the house.
Accordingly, a less complex and simpler system is desired for mounting a cord on a gutter and similar hard to reach structures.